The house that will be broken down is inhabited by a strange company. In the centre - a lovely provincial Masha who failed the entering exams to the institute and didn't dare to go back home to her parents… In the deserted house Masha is a street-cleaner and it gives her the legal ground to live in Moscow.
All the other inhabitants are all mess, "limits"…
…Once in autumn a nameless young man appears in the house…
The newcomer rather skillfully and craftily finds keys to the heart of each one. But this lightness originates from complete indifference and confidence that he lives here temporarily - will take wing and fly away and then his new pals will immediately disappear from his memory. Misha is hiding - he waits, he gets away from some fellows or customers - doesn't really matter. To all appearances he is an experienced drug-dealer. There is iron self-control in him, ability to simulate, readiness communicate if necessary - just as much as he needs at a given moment. And a morbid nervous tenseness at a seemingly calm appearance.
Menshikov is precise playing Misha's slipping away in any attempt to draw his true nature out. Thin lips show sweet smile that is precisely performed in a very mechanic way. He can show extreme attentiveness too, turn himself on and off when necessary. And always listen to what is going on.
The first one to give in to the guest's mysterious charm is Masha - pure and innocent, Masha fancied that he was the Prince who came to her - long waited, generous, beloved. Their brief romance is a slum pastoral, but Oleg Menshikov carefully brings some deathly evenness in the false idyll, it corresponds to his true attitude to his new mistress, but she herself doesn't notice anything, and thank God! Lying in bed with Masha, Misha stares at the cracky ceiling for a long time. It's clear: he is thinking about something very important, probably, calculates how long he will have to stay in this damned house and lie in this bed though with a pretty mistress. And when he hears an alarm signal, he'll pull himself together at once, mobilize all his will, and silently step over Masha's love and everything that seemed to have been between them. In fact, have been for her, for him there has been nothing. A short rest on his way brightened with sex. In his life - troubled, not letting waste his energies on lyrical emotions - there was plenty of them.
The conditions are that Misha has to leave the "limits" shelter before the target date. On one hand, on Chuma's squealing militia comes for Spinoza. On the other hand, Misha's enemies became active. And he escapes by the roofs, runs, seemingly flies, elusive, empty as a balloon. Later somebody will pierce the balloon after all, and it will fall on the ground as a small dirty rag, shrunken scrap, trash… But Misha doesn't think about it - only to escape, escape, escape…
"Life By Limit", having pretensions of a serious social analysis, actually turned out to be nothing more than a film-for-a-day. Though Oleg Menshikov felt quite comfortable there, having captured partly familiar to him atmosphere of the last years of Soviet regime, its illusiveness and grieving. He worked as it used to happen to him before independent from the director. All other actors play organically, precisely…
(from the book by Elga Lyndina "Oleg Menshikov", Moscow - Panorama, 1999)
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